


Misfits

by qianwanshi



Category: Young Avengers (Comics)
Genre: F/F, M/M, Misfits AU, Not Beta Read, Superpowers, au superpowers, but like, to be updated with no schedule
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-01-19
Updated: 2018-06-25
Packaged: 2019-03-06 16:49:45
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 2
Words: 4,785
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/13415493
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/qianwanshi/pseuds/qianwanshi
Summary: A strange event happens over New York City while a mismatched group of young offenders serve their court mandated community service. Everything changes.





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> I had what has kind of become by annual if annual meant "whenever I remember it's been a while" rewatch of Misfits and it's still so dang good.  
> These will be short, whatever bits pop into my head, not beta read by any means, and updated as the inspiration hits me. Better here than wasting away in my gdocs.

“This is it,” the burly, kind faced probation worker starts to say. “This is your chance to give back to the community, redeem yourself, clean…”

 

Tommy stops listening, it’s a speech he’s heard dozens of times already. Wipe your slate clean, fresh start, blah blah blah. Load of shit. He takes the chance to look around him at his group of fellow young offenders. With enough practice, it’s easy to get a feel for group dynamic at a glance. Or maybe Tommy is just getting good at reading people.

 

This group is…. Definitely unique. Tommy has had a few groups, both good and bad before. They're all standing lakeside, near the park center where they’ll be spending their afternoon picking up whatever trash New York city’s finest citizens have left for them to clean. 

 

The most immediately eye catching is the girl farthest from Tommy, leaning against the guardrail and seeming to pay just as little attention as Tommy himself is. She has dark hair with sunglasses resting on top, Asian facial features. Or, at least, the best he can tell under the littering of scrapes, bruises, and bandages covering the vast majority of her face. When she reaches up to tighten the floppy bun her hair is in, her knuckles are bruised and raw, too.

 

_That's_ a story Tommy wants to hear.

 

Next to her is a boy about his age and build, maybe a little skinnier, dark hair a mess on his head. He looks like he’s both on the verge of tears and listening intently to every word out of the probation worker’s mouth. Poor baby’s first time, how sweet it is to be witness to.

 

The black boy next to him is listening attentively as well, but he looks less like he’s hearing words of gospel and more like he’s been raised to show respect to authority figures. He’s dressed in a button up collared shirt and wearing glasses with dark frames. Total nerd, Tommy is calling it right now. He probably has like, four SAT prep books in his locker in the park center. He doesn’t look like the crime committing type, but hey, Tommy has been surprised before.

 

The last guy, the only guy to Tommy’s left, is some big blond muscle fuck jock type of guy. Tommy is just taking stock of him and drafting a mental list of probable crimes when he’s interrupted.

 

“Thomas,” the probation worker bursts through Tommy’s thoughtful silence. Jesus, is that guy still talking? “Nice to see you back here. Again.”

 

“Mm,” Tommy hums with the most annoying smile he can muster. “You know me, love giving back, Luke.”

 

“Blake,” the worker corrects him, an unpleasant look on his face.

 

“Yeah,” Tommy agrees.

 

Someone to his right turns a laugh into a cough, Tommy would put money on beat up Asian girl before the other two. There’s already a vein bulging in the probation worker’s temple, probably this is record time for Tommy, he’s a little proud.

 

“We saved your jumpsuit.” Blake is teasing him now, dragging him out where everyone can see him for what he is. A delinquent, a criminal. That’s fine, let him. 

 

“How nice,” Tommy says. “It’ll fit, then.”

 

When he looks back, the Asian girl is the one watching him with an amused look on her face (he thinks). The black boy is looking at him like he’s made of sludge, but it’s also possible that that’s just what his face looks like. Dark haired twink still looks like he could cry at the drop of a hat.

 

“Go get suited up and meet me here,” Blake ignores Tommy’s words and speaks to the group as a whole. 

 

They meander to the locker rooms of the nearby park center, already prepped with their orange jumpsuits and ready to go. Tommy wiggles into his suit with minimal effort, previous experience proving useful once again. Probation worker hadn’t been lying, the tick marks made by pen on the inside of his left sleeve say so, this really is his old suit. He’d never pegged the guy for the sentimental type.

 

“They’re dressing us like inmates,” grumpy face looks even more grumpy faced at the jumpsuit in his hands. “It’s dehumanizing.”

 

The sound of metal locker doors slamming echos all around them while the others get dressed.

 

“It’s comfortable,” Tommy corrects him.

 

“At least we won’t be getting trash all over our clothes,” says the big muscle guy.

 

“He’s got the right attitude!” Tommy snaps and points at him. “Come on, the sun is shining, we get to spend all day in the park.”

 

“I don’t deserve to be here.” He looks extra extra grumpy, but steps into his suit all the same. Dark twink is already dressed, staying silent throughout the process. A mystery twink.

 

“Cheer up, man.” Tommy bumps the back of a hand against grumpy’s shoulder as he walks past him. “Orange is a good color on you.”

 

Someone hisses something as Tommy exits, but it’s inconsequential to him. They’re all on the same level here, like it or not. Can’t change the past.

 

Outside of the split locker rooms, Tommy catches up with swollen Asian girl with a few quickened steps behind her. It occurs to him briefly that she may have been the victim of something violent, a battered wife who murdered her husband, no, wait, murder doesn’t result in community service.

 

“What do you want?” She asks. Maybe he’d been quiet for too long.

 

“What’s your story?” Tommy pesters. “What’s with the look? Oh my god, did you create a fight club? Do you have a second personality following you around?” He twists around to look, like he could see this other personality physically there with them. 

 

She snorts an ungraceful laugh. This closely, Tommy can see her face twitch from the pain of it. They both bend to grab their trash picking up wands, not bothering to wait for the rest of the gang and heading back outside.

 

“Some guy tried to stick a hand up my skirt at a party. I broke his face.” She shrugs like this story is no big deal. 

 

“Whoa,” Tommy breathes out. “Badass.”

 

“I’m Kate.” They reach Luke or Bluke or Blake at the same time, Tommy doesn’t spare him a look. 

 

“Tommy,” he replies.

 

Kate smiles at him. Kate is missing a tooth. Tommy is pretty sure he’s in love.

 

The rest of the group eventually team up and introductions are passed around as they pick up shitty soggy garbage from the sidelines of a public park. The dark, floppy haired twink is Billy, grumpy stick up his ass is David, and blond teen Greek statue is Teddy. Tommy will forget all of this information within the hour.

 

“People throw away such good stuff,” Tommy says with a little tsk. 

 

“People need to use public trash cans,” Teddy says. Behind them, someone lets out a disgusted sounding sigh. A quick peek reveals Billy grimacing at the end of his litter wand, condom flopped over the end. 

 

“What’d you get in for?” Tommy asks. No reason to be bored to tears during their court mandated work hours. 

 

Teddy turns pink in the ears. This very well may be his first time as well, Tommy realizes, holy shit. 

 

“I was busted at a party,” he says. “I only had one drink. I didn't get away.”

 

“That sucks, man.” No one else around them speaks up. It looks like Billy is listening while trying to hide the fact that he’s listening as best he can. 

 

“What about you?” Teddy asks.

 

“Honestly I didn’t even do anything,” Tommy insists. “I had a disagreement in a frozen yogurt shop.”

 

Teddy raises an eyebrow. No one else looks particularly convinced either.

 

They clean and pick and chat while Blake hovers not too far away, watching to assure that none of them (Tommy) form any great ideas of escaping or something. Tommy wouldn’t do that, actually, but it makes sense the guy would assume he might.

 

“It's fucking hot,” Kate groans. There's sweat dripping down her face and the park is only a fraction more clean than when they started out. 

 

“The suit doesn't really breathe,” Tommy agrees. He gestures toward himself in a broad motion. “Creates a real funk, too.”

 

“Disgusting.” This is the first thing Billy has really said all afternoon. The look on David’s face seems to imply that he agrees with the sentiment. 

 

Tommy opens his mouth to defend himself, but is interrupted by a loud booming sound from some distance away. It's impossible to tell where it came from at first, until a plume of smoke appears in the skyline. Manhattan. The Avengers. 

 

“Shit,” David hisses behind Tommy. 

 

“What do you think it is?” Teddy asks. 

 

He gets no answer, no one says anything at all. The sparse visitors in the park stand gaping with them over the trees. 

 

“Another invasion?” Billy offers. His thoughts do nothing to calm anyone. 

 

Faintly visible in the distance, close but too far away to be decipherable, figures appear in the sky over the skyscrapers. Only a few, flitting around back and forth, clearly engaged in battle.

 

“Get into the center,” Blake commands, finally breaking his gaze away from the distant battle. Then, when no one immediately moves he barks, “Let’s go!”

 

They trail back to the center in a jagged line, Tommy somewhere in the middle dragging his wand on the ground next to him. This is honestly not that unusual of a situation in the city. Everyone has a standard procedure for sudden unexpected super powered battles breaking out.

 

The crashing and booming is becoming more constant, and the smell of smoke is already in the air around them. Probably the fight will move this way. Plenty of open ground in the park to fight around in. Tommy thinks grumpily that they’ll have to be the ones tomorrow to clean up all the battle remnants from the grass. How annoying.

 

Ahead, Billy turns to look over his shoulder at the skyline again. “Do you think that’s Iron Man?” He asks.

 

Tommy turns to look behind him as well just in time to see two of the distant people shoot each other with… something. They clash and there’s an explosion, so sudden that no one has the chance to react to it. A second explosion sounds, so loudly Tommy can feel it ringing in his ears despite the distance. 

 

They all stand frozen, watching in shock, completely unable to comprehend the events as they unfold.

 

One of the figures floating in the air separates, it’s impossible to tell who it is, and surrounds themselves with some kind of aura. Protective, maybe, who knows. In the same moment, they’re shot from two different angles, blue energy recognizable as Iron Man’s and red, Doctor Strange? All at once, the world feels like it slows down around him. This time, the explosion shakes the world, ripples launching through the air with Manhattan as the epicenter.

 

Tommy turns, aiming to run to cover. There’s no saying what the explosion means, but it can’t be good. He grabs the arm of the person nearest to him, David. There’s no knowing that they’ll be able to get away, but it’s better to try than stand around and get killed. He sees everything as he pulls David like it’s freeze frames through a viewfinder: Teddy, wide eyed, grabbing Kate and Billy both and shielding them, Kate with bruised hands over her ears making herself small, Billy staring over Teddy’s shoulder, mesmerized and horrified.

 

He and David barely make it two steps before the rippling explosion reaches the park, rocking through them and knocking them all to the ground as if they were weightless.

 

It hurts, pain rips through Tommy when he lands on the hard grass and the explosion screams through his ears. It’s almost too much to bear, and just as he feels on the verge of passing out from it, it stops.

 

Everything is still.

 

Sound returns, bit by bit. The leaves of the trees rustle in the wind, people around them begin to murmur and gasp and cry. Tommy refuses to open his eyes, his body still aching like he’d been hit by a train.

 

“-ey.” A faint voice, somewhere in the distance. Someone shaking him on the ground. “Tommy.”

 

Tommy groans when he rolls over onto his back, the small motion taking every ounce of strength he has left. 

 

“He’s okay!” The voice says now.

 

He finally opens his eyes to see who was shaking him. David is sitting up beside him, looking just as aching sore as Tommy feels, but leaning over to inspect Tommy for injury.

 

“Speak for yourself.” Tommy groans again as he struggles to sit up, ribs protesting. “Is everyone alright?”

 

“We’re okay,” Teddy calls from a few feet away.

 

When Tommy glances over, Teddy is helping Kate and Billy both into sitting positions with gentle hands. Billy has his arms wrapped around himself tight, Kate is visibly trying her hardest to keep her hands from shaking. Tommy can relate, his own legs shake so hard he’s not sure he could stand if he tried.

 

“What the hell was that?” Kate asks. She sounds a lot less shaky than she looks, he’s got to give her credit.

 

“The Avengers?” Teddy squeaks.

 

“Fuckers,” a new voice grumbles nearby. Blake curls onto his side in the grass, holding onto his ribs.

 

“Are you okay?” Kate directs at Blake where he’s rolling around.

 

Tommy looks around them. Branches from trees have been blown off and are littering the ground of the park, most of the other visitors have fled, leaving the park deserted. The smoke in the distance has dissipated a bit, but is even darker than before, with a purple tint to it. There are still figures in the sky, though not so viciously attacking each other as before. 

 

“I’ll be fine,” Blake answers through gritted teeth. He finally sits up properly, taking deep, uneven breaths. “How about we just call it a day.”

 

They take their time gathering themselves up, Teddy pulls Kate and Billy onto their feet like it’s so easy, Tommy notes with interest. Together, they hobble back into the park center, still sore and shocked from the force of the strange explosion.

 

“You alright?” Tommy bumps his hand against David’s arm. He’s walking with a slight limp, slowing down behind everyone else.

 

David nods shortly. “Just the way we fell, hurt my hip.”

 

“Sorry,” Tommy apologizes. It’s probably because of him yanking roughly on David that he got hurt.

 

“No, no.” David waves his hand once. “Thanks, though, for pulling me away.”

 

Tommy shrugs, not knowing what to say, having never once been good at communicating actual human feelings with someone else. He picks up his pace and hurries into the locker room, just wanting to change, go home, and play some mindless video game well into the night.

 

He slams his locker door open and strips out of his orange jumpsuit in a rush, eager to leave quickly. Everyone else mills in around him, beginning to change silently and efficiently. 

 

A buzz and a yelp break Tommy out of his distraction. Everyone is staring at Billy, sucking a finger in his mouth, eyebrows drawn together.

 

Billy pulls his hand away from his face and shakes his fingers out. “I got shocked,” he explains awkwardly. He turns back to open his locker properly, cheeks and ears turning red. 

 

Tommy leaves in a rush ahead of everyone else, headphones in, music loud, and keeping a rapid pace all the way to the subway station. What a weird fucking day.


	2. Chapter 2

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Things get weird after the magic explosion

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Still not beta read! If you spot any glaring mistakes feel free to shout them out. This whole idea is slowly ambling toward.... something.
> 
> A new POV! This time, Kate.

Kate glances at the collection of makeup on her vanity for the third time that morning with a wistful sigh. She knows her face is still too tender and scraped up to use any of it, but ugh, she misses mascara.

Whatever.

There’s no reason to waste the makeup just to go sweat it all off picking up garbage anyway. Makeup is expensive, community service is not worth it. 

The looks she gets on the subway on her way out to do her service fill her with some sense of pride, wearing the bruises and scabs on her face like trophies. She’s not a victim, and no one should dare to look at her as one. She takes no shit and god help anyone who tries to give her any.

She's not the last to arrive in their locker room, thankfully. The quiet one, Billy, is already changed into his bright orange and sitting on a bench with a baseball cap pulled over his head. Teddy is there as well, digging around in his designated locker and waving a greeting over his shoulder.

Everyone else trickles in as she gets changed and they all exchange muted and muffled greetings. She fights through the pain of her hair catching on the torn skin of her knuckles when she brushes it back into a tie. The manual labor is almost definitely worth the lesson that jerk learned via her fists, but she sometimes catches herself wondering if the split knuckles and missing tooth are.

Tommy appears last, looking exhausted and moving sluggishly through the door with a to-go cup in one hand. None of the energy or attitude from the day before present on his face. He doesn’t even open his locker straight away, dropping his forehead against it for a solid half minute without moving.

“What’s with you?” Kate asks when no one else does despite the curious glances.

It takes a second, but Tommy finally grunts in recognition. “Couldn’t sleep.”

A glance around the room shows Kate the rest of their little gang looking at Tommy just as confused as she feels. 

“I couldn’t calm down all night, I-” He’s interrupted by a wide yawn he can’t manage to stifle. “My heart was racing like crazy.”

Kate, the nearest to Tommy, steps forward and grabs the coffee from his hand. “Caffeine will only make it worse,” she defends when he gives her an angry look.

Tommy groans with the monumental effort it takes to lift his head away from his locker and change into his uniform. He’s spared a few more concerned glances from everyone else, but they eventually move on, gathering up their stuff to work with and making way to leave.

They’re all stopped short when Billy pipes up from his space on the bench.

“I’ve felt weird too,” he says. “All night.”

Despite an utter lack of any amount of energy, Tommy still manages to snort loudly. He’s spared a split second of a glare from Billy that Kate, while pretty endeared to Tommy already, can’t argue he hasn’t earned. 

“Weird how?” David asked, eyes narrowed in Billy’s direction.

“I don’t know,” Billy starts. “Buzzing. Like something’s in the air.”

No one can discern any sort of meaning from his vague description, and Kate is about to comment exactly so until Billy rips his uncharacteristic baseball cap off. His hair, just this side of too long for Kate’s tastes, instantly halos around his head. She remembers learning about static electricity as a kid, seeing the experiment of a balloon rubbed on someone’s head and making their hair stand on end. He looks like that, but if someone had rubbed a hundred balloons on his head.

“Whoa.” Teddy reaches one hand out toward Billy, his hair clinging to the outstretched fingers with an audible crackling. 

David’s eyebrows shoot toward his hair. “Okay.” He stops, his head jerks a bit like he’s adjusting to the new weight of this information in his head. “That’s… weird.”

“No kidding,” Tommy agrees. 

Billy jams the cap back onto his head, roughly forcing his hair back to some sense of normal. “It’s like there’s some electricity around me. I keep getting shocked when I touch things.”

As if on cue, Teddy’s drooping arm brushes against Billy’s and they both jolt at the static shock caused by the contact. Teddy jerks his hand away to rub the sore spot frantically. 

“Sorry,” Billy apologizes. His face is bright red. It’s very cute, in Kate’s opinion.

“So, what,” she breaks the silence of the room. “Static electricity and a bad night of sleep. Anyone else?”

Teddy shakes his head, David speaks in a soft voice that he hasn’t noticed anything unusual.

“Then let’s go pick up some trash.” She nudges Tommy ahead and makes her way out of the locker room, gulping the last of his coffee down and tossing out the cup. “It’s probably to do with yesterday, it’ll wear off.”

“The explosion?” David, inquisitive as always. “How?”

“I know someone who knows some of the Avengers.” Kate confesses, turning to take a few backward steps in order to better face her companions. “He said weird side effects of magic is normal there. One time, his-“

“HEY.” A shout vibrates through the hall of the empty park center. It shocks Kate into still silence, tense at the unexpected volume. 

“Let’s go!” Blake stands at the entrance door looking livid. “You’re all late.”

“Sorry.” The apology alone drips sarcasm from Kate’s voice, the eye roll is just a little icing on the cake. “We were dealing with something.”

They amble out of the doors in a more or less orderly fashion, collecting bags and wands and heading on their way. Blake watches them the whole way, still seething, though silent.

“Chill out.” Tommy meanders with his wand in front of him like a walking stick. “The trash isn’t going anywhere.”

Their day goes, predictably, pretty similarly to the day before. Well, before the magical fight slash explosion over the city. Kate allows her mind to wander as she works; it takes very little brain capacity to focus on shoving garbage into a bag. David works nearby, presumably preferring her silent company rather than someone like Tommy. 

She thinks back on her sentencing hearing. She’s been assigned anger management meetings every week set to begin once she’s settled into her service work.

Ridiculous.

She doesn’t have anger problems, Greg from the party has personal boundary problems. 

“Such bullshit,” she hisses, each syllable emphasized with a sharp stab at the napkins stuck in the grass at her feet.

When she looks back up from shoving them into her bag, David is smiling, almost to himself. They make eye contact briefly. “Something funny?” 

David shakes his head once. “It is,” he says. “It’s bullshit.”

“I’m here for defending myself and he’s out there with slap on the wrist.” Kate scoffs. 

“You serious?” David asks.

“I swung first,” she elaborates, then gestures at her own face. “Boys will be boys.”

Wand falling limply to his side, David looks horrified. She quickly interrupts before he can jump into how messed up it is; she’s already had that conversation with herself a thousand times. 

“What’s your bullshit?”

Horror falls back into neutral falls back into the grumpy faced boy she’d met a day ago.

“I was walking home from work and took a shortcut,” David starts, loud enough for only Kate to hear him. “Right into an alley where a couple of taggers were just about to get busted. Cops said I was involved.”

“What?” The still-healing skin on her face pulls painfully when her eyebrows shoot upward.

David shrugs. “I ‘looked like I was with them.’” His eyes jerk in an almost-roll when he quotes the police. 

“Are you kidding me?” Kate asks. David only shrugs and shakes his head in response. “Don’t take this the wrong way, but you were wearing a sweater vest yesterday. Doesn’t scream vandal.” She’s in disbelief, but not surprised that cops wouldn’t see that David is too much of a nerd to ever break any laws. 

David huffs an almost laugh in a short breath. “We all told them, they said the other guys were covering for me because I’m underage.”

“ _That’s_ bullshit.” Kate jabs a sharp finger in his direction. 

Blake reappears, something he did frequently the day before as well. Before, he checked in on their status and offered water bottles, this time he grumbles and very nearly steams with anger at the sight of their leisurely pace.

“This isn’t chill out time,” he says to the group. “You’re working off a sentence here. I’m- Where’s Shepherd?”

Everyone either looks around (Kate, Teddy) or pretends to have not heard the question (David, Billy). In truth, they’d all seen Tommy slip away several minutes ago toward the nearby treeline without a care in the world. Kate just doesn’t see how it’s her problem if Blake can’t keep track of the delinquents he’s in charge of supervising. 

Maybe something in their behavior gives it away, maybe this is just something Tommy has done before and Blake really does know him that well. Whatever it is, he stomps off away from the group toward the trees.

“Douche,” David mutters as soon as he’s gone.

Teddy laughs and opens his mouth to share his input (surprising to Kate, honestly, he looks like almost as much of a goodie two shoes as David) but the sounds of shouting stops him. Shouting from the area Blake just disappeared into.

They all scurry to the tree line, not too far away, to check out what exactly is causing the noise. 

Blake is there, dragging Tommy across the grass by the neck of his suit. “-sick of people like _you_.”

Legs and arms flailing, Tommy is scrambling to try and get upright. The grass is slippery, and every time he manages to get a foot on the ground, Blake jerks him so he falls flat again. He doesn’t even look like he has a destination, he’s simply dragging Tommy through the grass just to get him scared.

“What the hell,” David mutters.

“You can’t do that!” Teddy shouts.

Their shouting grabs the attention of both of them. Tommy sends a look their way, and he actually looks scared. So this isn’t normal, then.

It makes Blake hesitate for a moment, just long enough for Tommy to thrash and pull out of his grasp. He scrambles on the ground, so fast he can’t manage to find purchase at first, trying to rejoin their group. Kate takes half a step forward toward him, but Blake is recovers faster. He grabs Tommy’s ankle and yanks him back toward him.

When his fist raises, Kate stops thinking and runs right at him. He can see her coming, which at the very least stops him from punching Tommy in the face, but does give him time to react and shove her away like she weighs nothing.

“Nothing to do with you,” he spits toward her where she’s skidded to a landing on the ground. He looks back at Tommy. “I’m sick of you, you worthless-” he punches Tommy with a sickening sound. “Piece of-” another punch immediately after the first.

“STOP!” 

The air around them crackles with a new energy, something so white hot it feels cold. There’s a flash of bright blue for half a second, and when everything returns to normal, Blake is lying motionless and limp on top of Tommy.

Tommy scrambles out from under Blake and Kate completes the rush forward that she’d been shoved away from before. Tommy already has the start of a black eye forming, but thankfully isn’t bleeding. He looks really shaken up, Kate can tell, but she can also tell he’s trying to hide it.

“What was that?” David asks.

She starts to answer, turning to look at him she sees he wasn’t asking the group. He’s turned to look directly at Billy, Billy’s stood with one arm still outstretched, looking shell-shocked.

“He was-” Billy’s voice shakes like he was the one being attacked. “He was going to kill him.”

“What did you do to him?” David presses further.

“I-I-” He gets caught up in stuttering on the pronoun for a while before giving up and shrugging. His voice shrinks to a whisper. “I just wanted him to stop.”

Kate finally turns her attention back to Blake. She’d been so worried about Tommy and so relieved that the scariness was over, she hadn’t realized that he hadn’t moved since the blue flash. She crawls over in the grass and shakes his shoulder. When she gets no response, she turns him over onto his back. Nothing is visibly wrong with him at first, there are no wounds. His eyes stare blankly up at nothing, no breath, no pulse.

Her voice wavers as bad as Billy’s had a moment before when she looks back, first to Tommy and then to the other three, overwhelmed tears ready to pour.

“He’s dead.”


End file.
